Even better, I could write scenes that didn’t require dialogue at all, like the following dream sequence:
DARK.
CLOSE UP of MELISSA lying down, head on a pillow with a blanket pulled up to her neck. Camera ZOOMS BACK into a long shot, revealing she’s asleep on the COUCH in the LIVING ROOM.
Closed CURTAINS cover the WINDOWS overlooking the COUCH.
CUT TO: the face of a CLOCK, its hands set to 11:59. HOLD, until the minute hand clicks to indicate midnight.
CLOSE UP of MELISSA again. Her eyes move rapidly, indicating troubled sleep. A slant of light illuminates her face, but a SHADOW crosses over it.
MEDIUM SHOT, revealing that BRENDAN VERLOCK stands next to the COUCH, watching her as she sleeps.
POINT-OF-VIEW shot (angle of MELISSA’S EYES, if they were open). BRENDAN VERLOCK towers over her, his arms hidden beneath his smoking jacket. He leans closer, and the camera tilts to the side to unbalance the framed image.
CLOSE UP of MELISSA. Her head in shadow, but a white shape moves to her brow: BANDAGED HAND #1, as BRENDAN VERLOCK gently pushes aside a wisp of her hair.
BANDAGED HAND #2 appears from the opposite edge of the frame. Then, impossible, BANDAGED HAND #3 enters the shot.
[MAKEUP or F/X] CUT BACK to MEDIUM SHOT: BRENDAN VERLOCK stands over sleeping MELISSA. He’s framed from the back, and his smoking jacket spreads open like a cape. FOUR ARMS reach out from beneath each side of the jacket.
CLOSE UP of MELISSA, as one of the bandages falls off to reveal a black and bristled appendage, with a single talon instead of fingers [MAKEUP: SPIDER HAND #1]. A syrupy ichor drips from the appendage and lands on MELISSA’s cheek. Her eyes open.
MEDIUM SHOT. Melissa SCREAMS in panic then sits up on the SOFA. Her hands search around her in the dark. BRENDAN VERLOCK is not there. She rubs at her cheek, as if to remove a stain. Eventually she calms herself, shakes her head and her lips form the words, “Just a dream.”
THEN: the CURTAINS part suddenly as a [prop:] GIANT SPIDER LEG crashes through the WINDOW and into the house. [STUNT and F/X:] The SPIDER LEG grabs MELISSA, and pulls her out through the shattered window.
CUT TO: CLOSE UP of MELISSA sleeping, her eyes opening. The light of morning comes through OPEN curtains.
MEDIUM SHOT: BRENDAN VERLOCK walks into the room.
DIALOGUE CARD: “Did You Sleep Well?”
#
The Thief
Today I am a thief. I will once again be a guest in my friend’s home, and I will betray her hospitality.
But I will not be greedy. I will take something small, and of no value.
#
We are in the police station set, in its newspaper office incarnation, and Melissa sits behind one of the reporter’s desks, with our battery-operated lantern beside a dormant gooseneck lamp. An old typewriter dominates the desk top, which is stained with rings from various coffee cups.
A piece of paper curls out of the typewriter’s platen. On the sheet in all caps Courier: MYSTERIOUS DEATHS REMAIN UNEXPLAINED
I’m in the side chair reserved for the suspect or the confidential source. I wait as Melissa reads the latest pages from my movie script.
As she nears the end, I point to the bottom of the page and explain what I mean by a Dialogue Card: “I’ve revised my initial concept, and I’m thinking of it more like a silent movie.”
“Why would you do that?”
She means, I’m certain, “Why worry so much about the logistics? It’s not like we’ll actually be able to make this movie, silly.”
So I tell her about the Super 8 camera I’m planning to buy, hoping she’ll go along with the idea. “It’s for grainy home movies, so there’s no sound. But I figure it could be old and atmospheric, like a creepy documentary. We couldn’t really make a feature film, so why not think about a short one? A one reeler, in movie speak.”
Melissa lets my script pages fall to the desk. She shakes her head back and forth.
“I know it’s dumb,” I tell her. “I’d have raw footage with no equipment to edit it. And no projector to show the finished film. It’s all hypothetical.”
She shakes her head again.
Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a set of keys.
She lifts the electronic lantern then stands and crosses to the door at the back of the set. The Police Chief’s office, or the Newspaper Editor’s—identified by whichever stenciled title would hang on the window of frosted glass.
After trying a few keys, one of them finally clicks and she turns the knob.
In the Winchester House-style haunted logic of this defunct movie studio, any room could lay beyond the door. We could step back in time to a harlot’s cramped apartment in London’s Whitechapel, finding the crime scene exactly as Jack left it, Mary Kelly’s corpse and entrails staining the bed and a piece of her heart still warm on the end table. We could descend into the underwater cave, where the Lake Monster dragged his unconscious conquests. Or we could travel light years in an instant, stepping foot on the Space Visitor’s home planet, a glimmer of diamond dust on the red, cratered ground.
The last thing I expect to see is an actual office.
Except…why is there a working lock on the door? There’s no need to secure a fictional character’s stack of official documents, or a cash drawer filled with Monopoly money.
As we walk into the set I immediately get an odd sensation, and realize what’s different about this location: it actually has a ceiling. Movie posters for The Stone Stairway and Spider House adorn the wall to my left, and I’m convinced it’s a solid wall rather than a thin partition.
Melissa lifts the lantern and lets it illuminate patches of the room. I see a file cabinet that’s pair to the one in her bedroom. A huge desk faces the door, with piles of papers obscuring its surface: some look like script pages, with handwritten changes in red pencil; others depict set designs or possible creature masks or special effects ideas. A few pages are broken up into smaller squares illustrated like comic book panels, and I recognize these as storyboards a director uses to visualize a film sequence.
At the corner of the desk sits a precarious stack of more than three dozen inch-thick booklets with construction-paper covers, fastened via metal clasps through the hole-punched pages. Movie scripts.
Beside the desk, a trash pail is filled with multiple tubes of rolled paper, and I deduce this is where Melissa retrieved the poster she gave me.
I let my own flashlight beam settle on the desk, trying to read some of the pages. Upside down, I see a typewritten list of items and a “Cost” column on the right. The figures corresponding to wood and fabric are circled in red, with the word “Cheaper” written in the margin. A “gray wig” entry is crossed out, with “Reuse from DCV” offered as explanation.
Dungeon of Count Verlock, maybe? There’s a gray-haired old woman who warns the tourists not to visit the Count’s castle on the hill.
I take a quick look at one of the storyboard pages. One panel depicts a hand reaching for a door knob, and the next contains a crude drawing of a woman’s screaming face.
My flashlight shifts to the stack of scripts. The one on top has a white label on its blue cover. Beneath the layer of dust, I can make out a title, “THE WITHERED HAG.” Typed beneath, “A Budget Studios Production.”
I’ve never heard of this film before. I reach for the bound pages, planning to peel back the cover and start reading.
“Over here, Brendan.”
In a daze, I don’t respond. Melissa repeats herself, more insistent.
She stands before a wide stretch of metal shelving along the wall behind the desk. My hand still hovers over the movie script until I see what she indicates with the raised lantern.
Her father’s office also served as a secure storage area for studio equipment. A shelf holds several movie cameras and folded tripods. At eye level sits a contraption with a small viewer and empty hand-crank reels on either side: a film editor.
On the lowest sh
elf, there are replacement bulbs that we could use to restore the arc lamp that exploded during my first visit.
A wheeled cart in front of the shelf contains a bulky 16 millimeter projector. A collection of metal containers, round and flat, are stacked on the lower section of the cart.
“Do you think any of this stuff will still work?” Melissa asks me.
I’m dumbstruck, but manage to nod. “Technology doesn’t go out of date that quickly.” In those days—our family’s Betamax VCR notwithstanding—this statement was generally true.
“Probably better than that Super 8 camera you were thinking about.”
“A lot better.” The cameras look intact. Dusty and worn down, as with most things here, but probably functional. My mind races ahead: I’ll need to order fresh film, and should check the model number of each camera, and I’m sure Melissa will let me use them or she wouldn’t have shown them to me, and does this mean that we really will make a film, and should it be my script, or the unfilmed script by her father, the one on the desk that Melissa apparently doesn’t even know she has…
I gravitate toward the largest camera, fairly certain it’s the same one I’ve seen Bud Preston standing next to in a behind-the-scenes magazine photo.
“Don’t lift it. It’s pretty heavy.” Melissa steps in front of me, and she gives the camera a slight turn on the shelf to reveal the viewfinder and the lens. She points out the metal lever for the zoom function, and the compartment in the side where the film goes. I move closer, and my fish-eye face reflects in the dark lens.
Now a rush of creativity hits me. In my imagination, I mount the camera on its tripod, then move it to the Castle set to frame the long dining table and stone fireplace. I could seat the MELISSA character at the table, while my BRENDAN VERLOCK character serves a modest dinner. Cut to the fireplace, and a large tarantula drops from inside the chimney onto cold ashes. Then a second one drops. Next I would cut back to a long shot of MELISSA enjoying her dinner, with the fireplace in the background and out of focus. She eats, and makes small talk, and all the while the fireplace fills with more and more dark black shapes, slowly catching the viewer’s attention. Then cut to the floor, where the tarantula scurries beneath her feet. I’d pivot the camera to follow the rubber arachnid as it creeps up the back of her chair. And then what if, what if… What if I could manage a scene where she’s set down her fork for a moment, and a spider pushes aside the scoop of meat and climbs onto the tines. MELISSA, oblivious in conversation, lifts the fork to her mouth, and her morsel of food has eight wiggling legs…
Melissa interrupts my reverie. “Time to go,” she says. “My mother gets home soon.”
“I wish we could try the camera.”
“Later. You still have to finish the script.”
As Melissa tries to usher me out, I remember my less-admirable plan for today. I’d been so distracted by the wealth of treasures in the vault of Bud Preston’s office, and the idea that maybe I actually could make a movie…
And now there isn’t time.
Unless I act fast.
Stall her.
“I need the model number for the camera.”
“We can do that next time. Come on.”
Her voice pulls at me, but I resist.
“I need to make sure I can order film stock to fit it. The number’s probably on the bottom. Oh, and—”
(Here, I apply a clever bit of misdirection…)
“—I’ll need a pencil and paper to write it down.”
She’s in a hurry, and opens the top desk drawer to check for a pen or pencil. I pretend to help. There’s plenty of paper here, but I move pages aside as if looking for a blank sheet.
I slide a storyboard page from beneath a pile and (it pains me to mutilate it!) fold it quickly and stuff it into my back pocket. The rustle of other pages should have covered any sound I’d made.
“Oh wait,” I say in the guise of sudden inspiration. “I’ve already got paper to write on.” I take my flashlight and step into the other room, where Melissa has left my script pages on the reporter’s desk.
“Found a pencil,” Melissa says when I return to her father’s office. It’s a golf pencil, with bite marks on the end, but there’s a dull bump of lead that should do the trick.
It takes two of us to tilt the camera back, and I aim my flashlight to help locate a metal label on the bottom. I say the serial number out loud, so Melissa can help me remember it. We set the camera down, and I scratch the number on the back of one of my script pages.
#
In the moment, I’d been strangely pleased with myself—at how I improvised quickly, my movements smooth and undetected.
Flawless, like a professional thief.
Walking away from Melissa’s home, I worry maybe I hadn’t been so smooth after all.
She’d seemed agitated as we hurried back up the stone stairway and into the main house. I could attribute her nervous manner to the fact that I’d stayed later than usual; Melissa feared her mother might arrive home to catch the unauthorized visitor.
Maybe a hint of disappointment colored her reaction. She knew I’d stolen a page of her father’s notes. It burned hot in my back pocket as I left Budget House. I’d tucked it there in a rush, and an incriminating edge of paper stuck out.
Is there something you want to give me, Brendan? Tell me now, return it before you leave, and I might forgive you.
She could be watching as I walk away. Did I unconsciously pat my back pocket, to reassure myself the item was still hidden there?
And what was on the page? I hadn’t had the opportunity to examine it. What if it’s some meaningless scribble, erased or crossed out and no clear connection to Bud Preston or his movies?
If I risked my friendship over nothing…
I’d experienced such a rush of excitement stealing that souvenir from the studio. Now that the adrenaline’s worn off, I feel nervous and ashamed. I’m not usually this kind of person. I don’t want to be this kind of friend.
Even though I’m far enough away from her house, I wait until I turn onto the lonely access road before I allow myself to inspect the stolen page.
I tug it gently from my pocket. Part of the page catches and rips slightly.
The paper is tissue-thin. Probably “Budget” Preston ordered the cheapest stock he could find. It’s brown from age as if coffee has been spilled on it.
Standing in the middle of the road, I carefully unfold the page. The boxed comic-book style panels indicate this is a storyboard sequence, as I’d hoped. Unfortunately, only the first two boxes are filled in. The first depicts a simple stick figure that any child could have drawn, and an arrow pointing to indicate that he (or the camera?) moves to the right. The second panel shows two lines converging on a point: a road heading into the distance, maybe, but it’s too abstract; there’s no text beneath the box to clarify the image.
There’s also no header to identify which film this sequence belongs to.
The diamond thief scaled walls, cut bars from a window, disabled a state-of-the-art security system, chloroformed two guards, and slid beneath motion-detection lasers, and escaped with his treasure before police could arrive. Upon examination, his diamond is worthless plastic.
Then I turn the page to catch a slant of early evening sunlight. In the upper right header, in faint blue ink, the Budget Studios logo appears.
That’s something, at least. The logo, and the document’s obvious age, should be enough to convince my dad that I’ve been telling him the truth.
Which is the only reason I took it. I wasn’t stealing for myself, but to prove a point to my dad. I’m sure I can take the page back later, no harm done.
I shift the angle of the paper again, watch the logo seem to disappear and appear.
A rustle of gravel startles me, and I see a car in the distance. It takes me a moment to orient myself—to realize that I’m standing in the middle of a road—but I recover my wits and step aside.
It’s a white sed
an, with green lettering stenciled on the side. I hide the storybook page behind my back as the car approaches.
There’s no shoulder to the road, so it’s a tight fit. The woman behind the steering wheel is about my mom’s age, and I try to recognize similarities to Melissa in her harsh features. She stares at me instead of the road as she drives alongside, and I’m afraid she will stop and try to talk to me.
The green lettering on the side door reads: EVERGREEN HEALTHCARE.
I hold my breath, and she drives past.
#
A new letter to my dad:
Here’s an ORIGINAL [underscore, underscore] document from Budget Studios. Note the blue logo in the upper corner.
I tried to copy it at the library, but the blue ink doesn’t show up in the Xerox. Please don’t lose it, since I borrowed it from my friend’s house. Use the enclosed envelope to return it.
NOW do you BELIEVE ME?
Love,
Brendan
#
The Rumored Boyfriend
Today I am the subject of rumor.
It’s lunchtime, and Melissa and I walk the perimeter of the schoolyard. Departing from our usual practice, however, we keep pace with each other so we can talk. At times, we slow to a stroll.
“We’ve got to cool it for a while.” Melissa is upset that her mother saw me on the road yesterday. Where else could I be coming, except from the Preston home? “She started asking me about my new boyfriend.”
“But we’re not…”
“I know, but that’s the way she acts. Always reading into things.”
“My dad jumped to the same conclusion.”
Life in a Haunted House Page 11
